Thursday, 7 May 2015

Election day! A young person's perspective...

So, politics.
Today, if you weren't already aware, is election day in the UK. This is where anybody over the age of 18 can vote for who they want to run the country for the next few years basically.

As a British teen, I do not like the fact that my knowledge of politics and the parties, candidates etc is very very limited. All I know is that you can vote a polling station and the main parties are the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Green Party (I think).

Yes I have basic knowledge of what each party kind of wants but who I would vote for? No clue.

It's funny because you hear about lots of parties trying to get young people's votes because they usually don't bother voting etc. There is a reason for why we don't bother. Of course some people just don't really care and can't be bothered but I would say that its more down to the fact that we don't understand.
We hear rumours from newspapers, television, the internet, other people about some parties being very violent, corrupt, a bit wacky, all about upper class people/ lower class people and sometimes that it doesn't matter who you vote for, nothing will change.
This information can be very subjective and biased of course because whoever is telling you this information has got a purpose to get you to vote for a particular party otherwise they probably wouldn't be talking to you.

To solve the lack of knowledge of politics in young people, I would suggest having lessons in politics and just being able to learn about who's who, what they want for Britain and their history perhaps. Okay so yeah, some people may object which is fair enough but surely knowing about who will run the country is much more important that Pythagoras's theorem?!
Children ARE the future. They will one day be standing up against each other trying to rule the country, that's a fact.

However, I understand that It would be very hard to deliver this information objectively, as all teachers would have their own personal opinions and beliefs, which kinda throws the idea of being taught about politics in schools out of the window but how else can we learn about this stuff?

I once again, do not have the answer, it's just something that irritates me as I feel like I'm really missing out but I would not want to jeopardise this country with my lack of understanding.

Thank you for reading, what do you think?
Just a disclaimer, of course this is my own personal experience, maybe you went to a school were they taught you this stuff? Let me know how you learnt about politics and who to vote for. Who influenced you?